Stephen Strasburg and the Washington Nationals look in good position to challenge for the division title this season.

The Eastern division of the National League will provide an entertaining race this season. With the NL East featuring the wheeling-and-dealing Washington Nationals, the new look Miami Marlins, and the sideshow organization that is the New York Mets, you’d be hard pressed to find a dull moment in this division this season. The Philadelphia Phillies ran away with the division last year with the best record in baseball, and the Atlanta Braves had their shot to get into the playoffs as a Wild Card, but let an 8.5 game lead slip as the St. Louis Cardinals stole the playoff berth. All said, the Braves finished 13 games behind the Phillies, and the Nationals finished 8.5 games behind Atlanta. This year could produce a different story as a result of the numerous offseason moves in the division.

I knew today was going to be good. I just didn’t know it was going to be this good. I spent the last few hours of my life sitting directly in front of my television watching baseball, with my laptop in front of me feeding information to me about the games I couldn’t watch. As a Rays fan, I settled in to watch the Rays put up a big number against rookie pitcher Dellin Betences hoping to clinch the Wild Card spot tonight, and at the same time as a Cubs fan keeping tabs on the Cardinals/Astros and Phillies/Braves rooting against the Cardinals. David Price started off the game struggling, but only allowed one run in the first inning, so the Rays were still in it, I hadn’t given up hope yet. And then the Mark Teixeira grand slam in the second inning, that was deflating.

Up by five runs, Joe Girardi appeared to no longer be too occupied with winning the game, than with exercising his pitchers. Seriously though, who sends out eleven pitchers in a regular season game? Anyway, I kept watching the Rays game hoping for a comeback and all I got was more pain; Mark Teixeira hits another home run to stretch the lead to 6 in the fourth, and then Andruw Jones sends another one deep to make it 7-0 Yankees in the fifth. At this point, I had had enough, I picked up my remote and flipped over to the Cardinals/Astros game to see what was happening there, and to not watch the Rays. Seeing that the Cards were up 7-0 on the Astros also, I knew how this game was going to end and so I began trying to find the Braves game to listen to on the MLB AtBat app on my phone, and being stuck in the middle of nowhere, my mobile network was not supporting this cause.

So, next game on the agenda available on tv: Phillies/Braves, and I tuned in just in time for extras. Read more of this post

Calamity, thy name is the Wild Card race. At the beginning of this month, both the Boston Red Sox and Atlanta Braves held an 8.5 game lead in the Wild Card over the Tampa Bay Rays and St. Louis Cardinals respectively. The Red Sox saw their AL Wild Card dwindle to just a 3.0 game lead in 11 days and it hasn’t been over 4.0 games since then. The Braves on the other hand saw their lead drop to 4.5 games in the same amount of time and kept their lead above 3.0 games until September 19th when Chipper Jones “lost a ground ball in the lights” that set the Marlins up for a 2-run walk off home run in the 9th. And now, today with the Red Sox/Yankees game still in the balance the Sox hold a 0.5 game lead over the Rays, and the Braves hold a 1.0 game lead over the Cardinals. Read more of this post